Square Enix has been busily drumming up as much interest in the gaming media as money can buy, even going so far as to have 2ch founder and online drug kingpin Hiroyuki play the beta – although it seems even his involvement may not be enough to turn the game into another disaster:

A complicated sequence of beta tests is due to start in February – at which point it will presumably begin to become apparent whether Square Enix has finally rescued the title.

thats not a mind flayer, its called a soul flayer any ffxi player knows this xD……. and a true ff player could care less if this is a wow killer or not…. ive been playing ff since the 80’s and even after the mmo release have never said or thought.. ” oh oh .. oh yeah …this is going to be a wow killer” =/

who cares.

and if ffo goes f2p it will die, thats a fact…. you get what you pay for….

Doesn’t really matter. They had the gall to shelf out and maintain one of the most ridiculous MMOs in recent history for months and they bitterly admitted their incompetence by “graciously allowing” players to play for free. To be honest, it should have been them paying us money to play, not the other way around.

And now, after months of antagonizing core fans and casual players they want to stick to the subscription model because “they want to keep their promises”. How fucking generous of them. Makes me want to award them a Soiled ChocoBOO Statuette +1 with a heartfelt “go fuck yourselves” on top.

Whatever. After all this monkey business, this game should have been B2P at worst. That’s buying a disc-based/digital copy and playing forever, for all the pedestrians.

Played ff11 for 6 years. It had its flaws, but overall it was a great game that required *way* more skill than any other MMO i’ve ever played before or after it.

Played ff14 for less than a month; it was complete garbage. From day 1 it was full of bots and was buggy as hell. And all the bad aspects of ff11 were magnified ten-fold.

At this point i kind of hope they cater it slightly towards the more casual crowd. FF11 for example was about as hardcore as you can get (way more than those kids that complain about vanilla wow raids) Personally i’m too old now to get into a hardcore MMO anymore.

I played in the alpha (shhh!) and it really was very different. They took a lot of the fans’ suggestions, ideas from other MMOs and other things and gave it an FF twist. Yes, the graphics are good, but unlike FFXIV 1.0 the gameplay is actually pretty fun too. I’m hoping it succeeds, this is the first time in a while SE has focused more on the fans than on the quick buck, and I’d rather that be positively reinforced.

Man, Wizards of the Coast is one of the most lawsuit happy companies around. I don’t understand why Square-Enix risks stealing the Illithids, and even calling them Mind Flayers in the PSP port of FF4, one of the few things absolutely under copyright.

I know they were in FF1, which was more or less a D&D game, but I figured that’s because they were in Japan, far away from TSR, and a relatively small company.

It’s always happens. just one monster looks so familiar is not that big deal if you compare to Blizzard. Who makes both well-know RTS game Warcraft and Starcraft series while all unit and faction and game play is based on Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. While Games Workshop have been sued Blizzard, WotC and GW never sue each other for their Elf, Orcs, goblin or even Necrons and Phyraxia looks so similar.

beta application is uphttp://entry.ffxiv.com/beta/na
it is for pc and ps3 and if you have ps3 ff13 members code you have priority for ff14 ps3 beta test… if you are legacy in ff14 you automatically get in to phase 1 of beta and if you have an active ff14 you automatically get into phase 3

“Square Enix has been busily drumming up as much interest in the gaming media as money can buy.”

Does Sankaku count as gaming media? They do tend to cover Final Fantasy games. 🙂

Really, this all looks pretty mediocre. At least, not what I’d call “quite spectacular”. From the perspective of someone who didn’t play the original version, the screenshots don’t appear to show anything particularly new or interesting.

Unless they’ve completely changed the gameplay mechanics, it will likely be just another MMO grindfest. I have little doubt that it will be improved over what it was before, but I question whether it will manage to be anything more than ‘decent’. At a time when many other MMOs have gone to a free-to-play model, it might be hard to convince people to pay a monthly subscription fee for something that’s not any better than what they could be playing for free. The Final Fantasy name can only go so far.

Yea me too it was pretty good compared to the old VER but still needs some tuning.. either way i need a new MMO.. i gotta stop playing TERA cuz the amount of pedo’s in that game is staggering… they ruin it

Where is my FFXI Remake? I played that for 7 years and loved every moment! I’ll give this a go but I’m honestly not expecting much, they should never have raised the level cap on FFXI past 75 and just kept on expanding it and maybe updating the graphics :3

The graphics were really good…. up to about 10 feet out from your character. Their version of “level of detail” was a solid, visible line beyond which all textures looked like garbage. You could see a building that looks half good and half crap if you look at it sideways. Then you could take a few steps forward and watch the magic not-crap line slide forward.

old graphics has a lot of bug. limited number of light and only one of it can cast dynamic shadow. The new one have overcome that limit and now i can feel the real power of FFXIV’s artist that build the world for you to messed around beautifully, while it takes lower spec of PC. if you’ve play both of it you will notice many improvement in graphics for sure.

while game play improved a lot. the new graphics can makes you fun even you just running around talking to NPC for some quest while discovering new part of land, LQ or grind some monster, farm for some material or discover new quest to bring you to other beautiful place or dungeon. the graphics always have some kicks to your eyes.

From what I have seen so far, the Realm Reborn systems, at its current Alpha state has reached at least the level of the average modern MMORPG.

Coupled with FF-level graphics and music, takes it at least a rank over the spam of WoW clones out there, even while the game is still in the alpha phase.

Though of course there are still quite a few issues with the systems, such as the combat system being your average ‘stand and attack -> press skill hotkey now and then’, the overall special effects being so flashy that in a party situation that you may have a hard time telling who did what to whom, etc…

think half the nay Sayers on here are just trolling to get a reaction because, they get kicks out of it. The game looks awesome and from the game play video’s of the alpha version, the combat system seems to be a lot faster than 1.0, exponentially even. I hope it does at least as well as 11 did, but would be even better if it did better than 11.

I played the 1.0 Beta and had combined time of 1 month after release… man did this game burn everyone. I read up on all the updates about 2.0 and I have to say, its sounding really really good. I would even say its sounding more like a traditional FF game (pre-FFX) and I think thats amazing for a MMO. Definitely signed up for beta and hoping to give it a spin.

You’re crazy. The last one WAS shit. They really step the game up with this one. No more fancy graphics with bad game-play. It plays out quite well in FF Realm Reborn…Just look at the fucking screenshots for gods sake. ALL REAL-TIME.